The Book of Common Dread

by Brent Monahan

  Willy gasped for breath. His face was red, as if he was in the throes of a stroke. "Go… to… hell," he answered.

  DeVilbiss tore the minister's purple stole from under a corner of the desk. With demonic fury, he pulled Willy's mouth open and stuffed the material inside, inch by inch, until not another thread would fit. The remaining length he clapped around Willy's nose and squeezed. The old man did not struggle long.

  DeVilbiss lifted the desk high enough to let the top drawer fall open. Among the items that tumbled out was a ring of keys. He staggered to his feet and stuffed the keys into his pocket. One of these shiny bits of metal had necessitated his extemporaneous tale of woe, all of it true except for his willingness to spare the minister and the scrolls. If he had been in Spencer's place, he would have hidden the security system key off the premises. Spencer had been less careful, pinning too much hope on legendary vampire banes. In Spencer's place, DeVilbiss would also have sent copies of his partial translation to at least two trusted colleagues. After destroying the scrolls he faced the tiresome task of researching all of Spencer's philologist associates, determining who had received translations and eliminating them.

  Vincent gingerly explored the skin just in front of his ear where the bullet had exited. Blood continued to ooze out, and the hole felt as if it had not scabbed over at all. He kicked aside the Christmas tree, which lay on edge. Dirt spilled and decorations scattered across the carpet. He prized his cherished Aldus forgery from under the desk rubble and moved into the hallway, where a long mirror hung. The reflection confirmed Vincent's fears; the wound was not healing as it should. He ran his tongue over the remnant of the wisdom tooth. He had never suffered a broken tooth and had no idea if Nick's powder would reconstruct dentin. The jagged remainder sliced open his tongue. He cried out his frustration, ripped the mirror from the wall and smashed it on the floor.

  The previous night, just as he had told Spencer, he had walked through the Mercer Street neighborhood and come close enough to Spencer's house to determine that it was connected to the gas company's utility line. DeVilbiss hurried into the basement, turned off the electricity that powered the heater's sensing devices, then opened the gas pipe. He flared his nostrils at the noxious odor the gas company mixed into the line to alert users to leakage problems. As he turned toward the basement steps his eyes fixed on Willy's workbench, where a torch lay connected to a small acetylene tank. Next to the torch sat one old silver dollar and the melted remains of another, as well as three bullets whose surfaces glinted piebald in brass, lead, and silver.

  "Bastard!" DeVilbiss muttered, spitting out pink saliva. Throughout his existence only three people had suspected his dark secret and had the nerve to try to kill him for it. The first two had come after him in daylight, with wooden stakes. They had been laughingly easy to despatch. Only Willy Spencer had had the foresight and skill to fashion makeshift silver bullets. The pain continued to radiate through Vincent's head with each beat of his heart, although he realized with relief that it had abated somewhat. Perhaps, he mused, among all the ludicrous vampire superstitions, the one about a silver bullet through the heart was true. He was the last man to reject all folklore out of hand, if for no other reason than that his livelihood as an herbalist depended largely on "old wives' tales." He cursed the bad luck that made Spencer reaim his weapon from DeVilbiss's bulletproof-vest-protected heart to his face. Of late, the Fates seemed more and more allied against him.

  DeVilbiss returned to the minister's study. On a bookcase shelf stood an arrangement of holiday candles and a book of matches. Vincent lit them one by one and stepped back to admire their festive glow. As he prepared to leave, his eyes chanced on what looked to be an old copy of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, bound in leather. He plucked it from the shelf, for leisure reading after the scroll business was concluded. He intended to read it soon.

  ***

  At 3:38 in the afternoon the Spencer house on Mercer Street ceased to exist. In a moment it transformed into light, heat, noise, dust, debris, and irreparable chaos. What the explosion had not instantly destroyed, the ensuing fire claimed.

  Vincent DeVilbiss emerged from the evergreen-shadowed park across the street. Satisfied that the destruction was complete, he walked toward his rented car, a book clasped in each gloved hand. His walk was quick-march; both to avoid the sun and because he had killed a third member of the Princeton University community. Although he had made the deaths look convincingly like suicide, smoking in bed, and a faulty gas line, the weight against three mishaps in quick succession was sure to bring an investigative response from law authorities. At the very least, their presence might slow his progress toward eliminating the scrolls. Slowing meant more time, and time was for once definitely not on his side.

  ***

  Simon came out of the Conrail Building and looked at the two-shopping-days-till-Christmas action in downtown Philadelphia. The French bakery where he and Alice Niederjohn were to rendezvous lay not far to the east. Anxious that he not miss the appointment, he had taken an early train. He strolled, peering into any store window that seemed remotely interesting. Turning away from one, he spotted the trim figure of a middle-aged woman, heading with grim purpose in the direction of the bakery. Despite the thirty years since her high school photographs, Alice was still recognizable and still beautiful. Her golden hair had aged to a handsome ash and her skin had lost the tightness and fat of youth, but the blue of her eyes sparkled wetly and her complexion was nearly as flawless a porcelain as her daughter's. Between her fingers she clutched a cigarette. She raised it needfully to her lips as she strode by.

  Simon followed her for half a block, watching her body language as she walked, realizing that she carried her beauty with the same introversion and shyness as Frederika. A well-dressed man who looked about thirty-five smiled at her as she approached him and then turned to admire her passing, but she seemed unaware. Simon increased his stride until he walked alongside her.

  "Mrs. Niederjohn," he said, gently, just as she noticed his presence. Her step faltered.

  "Mr. Penn?"

  "Yes." He gestured toward the corner. "There's the bakery. Shall we go inside?"

  Alice blinked nervously at his gentle smile. She dropped her cigarette to the pavement and ground it out, then allowed herself to be shepherded into the bakery, which doubled as klatsch-cafe by providing a half dozen cozy tables in the back. Alice maintained her silence while Simon helped her take off her black lamb coat and pulled out her chair. He noted the designer cut of her dress, the Piaget watch and the simply set half-carat diamond in each earlobe.

  "Thanks for agreeing to meet," Simon opened, ignoring the fact that he had virtually blackmailed her into the meeting.

  "You're a friend of Frederika," Alice said, repeating Simon's words from their telephone conversation.

  "I am. I think I'm her best friend."

  "How can I be sure of that?"

  Simon described the Vanderveen mansion in detail, mentioning the furniture that seemed to have been there a long while, commenting on the line of patriarchal portraits on the stairs and concluding with the yearbook she had left behind in the basement, which had provided him the clues for finding her.

  "I'm sorry I can't provide any of Frederika's reminiscences," Simon said. "She never speaks about you."

  The woman seemed satisfied by his candid reply. As soon as he finished she asked, "Do you have a photo of her?"

  "Sorry again. I don't keep pictures in my wallet." Simon was pleased to hear Alice's first maternal expression.

  A waiter took their orders of coffee and left them alone.

  "My husband knows about my first marriage and Frederika," Alice said, "But we both decided that we wouldn't let our children know about this part of my past."

  "I see," Simon said, although he didn't. "How old are your children?"

  "Fourteen and twelve." Alice produced a pack of Salems and tapped a cigarette out. "I'm willing to help Frederika, but only to the extent that my fa
mily is left out of this." She struck a match. Her hand shook as she lit the cigarette; her eyes fixed anxiously on Simon. He said nothing while she drew in the first puff.

  "You've got nothing to fear from me," he assured. In two dozen well-rehearsed sentences he related Frederika's notorious behavior with older men, her lack of other friends, her increasingly morose attitude, and the bizarre efforts she had begun making to contact her dead father. As he spoke he analyzed Alice's expressive face and traced her concern.

  "You love my daughter, don't you?" Alice asked, when he had finished.

  Simon felt a sudden explosion of heat in the pit of his stomach. "Yes, I do," he admitted for the first time, even to himself. "But I'm only a friend. That's all I may ever be. It's certainly all for now. As she is, Frederika destroys any man who gives her power over him."

  "I understand only too well," Alice said, smiling sympathetically. "You're wiser than I was. I married her father, and he nearly did destroy me. I was twenty-three when I met him. Even though I worked in New York City I was naive. I hadn't dated much. I was swept away by Frederik's charm, his intelligence, his dominance, that great sense of purpose. Everything about him seemed positive. I had no idea the same attributes could prove so negative to a marriage."

  The coffee arrived. Simon drained his cup much sooner than Alice did, allowing her to talk with little interruption. She too had her tale in ready order, but he wondered how long ago she had assembled the list of Frederick Vanderveen's trespasses against her. Once they were married, Alice had become Frederik's shadow. He kept her constantly at his side, displaying her beauty as proof of his seductiveness. She accepted the roles of hostess, traveling companion, and servant. He fed her his opinions on everything and expected her to echo them. Her life melded into his.

  "And all the while I told myself that the good works he did justified his high opinion of himself and my having to live in the shadow of his career. I saw how everyone else adored him, and I thought, 'How can you do any less?' " A look of loathing marred Alice's face. "Only after several years did I come to understand that he took away more than he gave. He fed the stomachs of the world's poor all right, but their hunger repaid him many times over; it fed his insatiable ego. Until this became clear to me, I felt as if I was being sucked into a huge vortex but blamed myself for being a weak swimmer. I had to escape or drown."

  "But why did you leave without Frederika?" Simon knew she would be ready for the question. Yet she winced when she heard it and drew in a long breath.

  "My reasons were not simple. As soon as my daughter was a year old, Frederik began badgering me about traveling with him. I wasn't a bad or neglectful mother, Mr. Penn. I wasn't. But you may begin to understand Frederik's powers of persuasion when I tell you I left Frederika behind in spite of my personal desires. Not once but twenty times."

  "Who stayed with her when you were both gone?" Simon asked, almost positive of the answer.

  "Her aunt… an older sister of Frederik's who lived with us in the house. Whenever I came home I felt so guilty for being away that I indulged her, let her have whatever she wanted. The more I tried to show her affection… to buy her affection, the less interested in me she became.

  "But Frederik was another story. She was obsessed with winning his love and attention. He knew he had a lock on the two of us, so he rarely bothered showing affection. Frederika wanted what she couldn't get. Her life centered on earning his approval, parroting his attitudes. The more distant he acted and the stricter he was, the harder she tried. I had no idea when we named her how appropriate it was; she became a little Frederik. I only understood these things later. At the time I couldn't think rationally. All I could do was feel, and what I felt was bereft. Like an outsider in my own home. What am I saying? That house was never a home and never mine. It was Frederik's alone, and always would be." There was a rancor in her tone unmitigated by the years.

  "Didn't you think she'd change if you could get her away from her father?"

  "You don't understand," Alice answered. "She rejected me and seemed perfectly happy with him. And I was convinced he'd never let me have her without a fight. The year before I left, I saw a psychiatrist, but the man was useless… should have had his license revoked. If I'd fought Frederik for custody he would have used the psychiatrist's testimony to have me declared mentally unfit." Alice sighed. "But the most important reason I left her was my own selfish needs. If we had shared her, I would have continued to be linked with the cause of my unhappiness. And he would have shaped her mind against me whenever he had her. He was very smart, and she would gladly have turned on me to please him. So I burned my bridges behind me." Her unhappy face finally brightened. "I also burned all three scrapbooks he'd assembled on himself."

  "Why didn't you contact Frederika when you finally understood all this?"

  "I tried to, when she was thirteen. I wrote several letters to her in boarding school abroad. In every one I apologized, but I also explained my side in great length. She didn't answer my first two. Then one day I got a response from her. She explained her feelings in great detail. The worst of it was a list of all my failures as a mother. She wrote that she'd been very happy until I started bothering her, that she wanted me to leave her alone, as I had years before, so she could… begin forgetting me again." The final words came slowly, as Alice fought them through a constricted throat. A tear escaped each eye. "So I honored her wish." She went to her purse, but Simon anticipated her need and handed her his handkerchief.

  "I thought you'd severed all contact with the Vanderveens," Simon said.

  Alice stopped daubing and looked at him in confusion. "I did."

  "Then how did you find out that Frederika was at a boarding school abroad?"

  "Oh. It took some time. Precisely because I wanted to have nothing to do with Frederik, I came up to Princeton one day in October and went to the junior high school I thought Frederika would be attending. The people in the office said she wasn't enrolled. I tried the other junior highs in the area, to no avail. I had used up the whole day, so I went home and immediately wrote to an old friend of Frederik's and mine, Stanley Krieger."

  "Dean Krieger?" Simon exclaimed.

  Alice smiled. "Is he a dean now? Good for him. He was kind to me."

  "And did he write back?"

  "Yes, although it took him almost two weeks. He was the one who gave me the address in Paris."

  Simon reacted with such a start that the entire table shook. Alice drew her hands quickly from its surface.

  "What is it?" she asked.

  A brief aphasia overwhelmed Simon. Now he had the answer to why Krieger was so angry about Frederik's treatment of his family, why the dean belatedly was so protective of Frederika's well-being and insistent that Simon avoid the personal aspects of the Vanderveen family. During the interview, he had adeptly expressed how Frederik worked his ways with men of lesser willpower and intellect. One of those men had been Stanley Krieger. Whatever compelling arguments he had used, Frederik had convinced his friend to supply Alice with a false address.

  "Frederika wasn't in Paris," Simon said.

  "What?" Alice said, her face turning chalky.

  "She attended the American School, in Montagnola-Lugano, Switzerland. I saw the proof. She's got six yearbooks from the school in the basement."

  "My God!" Alice gasped, on the weak expulsion of air that escaped her lungs. Her hands had begun to shake again. Simon took them in his own.

  "Your first husband was in Paris often, wasn't he?"

  "Yes. Very often."

  "He must have convinced an acquaintance there to accept letters on your daughter's behalf. I'll bet he wrote you the answer you thought you were getting from your daughter."

  "But it wasn't his handwriting."

  "But was it hers?" Simon argued. "You left before Frederika knew cursive handwriting. I'm sure you assumed it was her hand. My guess is that Frederik had some friend in Paris recopy his words and send them to you."

  Alice
sat up straighter, her eyes wet but no longer tearing. Her mouth worked for a moment, and then she said, "The bastard! I hope he's burning in hell." She drew her hands gently from Simon's grip and reached for her pack of cigarettes. Simon recaptured them.

  "I hope the same. He did his best to ensure that Frederika wouldn't come looking for you either: a few years after you'd left, he told her you'd died." This time, perhaps from the previous shock, Alice's reaction was more restrained, although her face showed no sign of regaining its color. Simon recounted his conversation with Katerina Callahan and her verbal slip, the clue that began Simon's search. "Katerina backed her brother's lie," he concluded. "You'd cut yourself off so effectively from his world, it was an easy He to maintain."

  "I should have left him when he insisted I travel," Alice said suddenly. "That was my mistake. I should have left right then, with Frederika in my arms. I can't believe he got away with declaring me dead!"

  "I'm sorry to say this, but you were his best accomplice," Simon said. "With his ego, I'm sure you wounded him deeply. Even eighteen years ago, abandonment and divorce were not looked on favorably. Especially for such a celebrated man. You were always at his side and then suddenly you were gone. Imagine the constant inquiries. Your leaving was one of his few public failures."

  "He probably told everyone he had to have me committed," Alice said, bitterly.

  "I wouldn't doubt it. And then, when it was clear you were never coming back, it was easier to say you'd died. Certainly an easier explanation to Frederika."

  The color returned to Alice's face, along with a resolute expression. "What can I do now?"

  "You can talk to her. Give her someone who loves her just because she lives," Simon suggested.

  Alice offered a wan smile. "I think she may already have that someone."

  "But, as you say, she's her father's daughter and wants what she wants. I'm certain she'll take great comfort from you when she learns you're alive, especially if you're loving and caring. She needs you to seal up the past she keeps slipping into."